The table presents the estimated literacy rates by region and sex between the years 2000 and 2004.
Overall, the highest rate is in Europe, while the lowest rate belongs to Africa. It is clear that, in every continent of the world, the percentage of male individuals is higher than the percentage of female individuals.
First, with the closest numbers, the literacy rates are the highest, above 90%, in Europe, the Americas, and Oceania, with 98.8%, 93.6%, and 93.4%, respectively. Despite the similarity with Europe and the Americas, there is a slightly larger difference between females (92.7%) and males (94.2%) in Oceania. However, the difference between women and men is 0.7% in Europe, 98.5% and 99.2%, respectively.
Second, the places with rates lower than 80% have quite an immense gap between genders. For instance, in Africa, the rate of women is 53.9%, which is 17.7% less than the rate of men. As well, in Asia, the men who are educated are 85.9%, however women are only 72.5%.
